WARREN ELLIS is a graphic novelist, writer, public speaker and author of the NYT best-selling novel GUN MACHINE.

The Care And Management Of Eyeballs

Published February 12, 2011 by Warren Ellis

I think I might do another mixtape on 8tracks while I work tonight. I think only around a hundred people ever listen to them, but it amuses me to make them. I would try something with Mixcloud, but I don’t know how to "chapter" a combined file.

Image to the left by Bruce Sterling, during a visit to Pasadena. Details, and a few more in the same style, over at his flickrstream.

So I’ve officially been asked by Avatar Press to come up with a new webcomic to replace FREAKANGELS.

Honestly not sure if I will, or even can. The thing about doing webcomics designed to eventually see print is that they put certain limits on the pages. The pages have to be easily scrollable, or display legibly as a full page on the screen without scrolling. Or you have to chop them up weirdly and reassemble them for print. FREAKANGELS was my first, simplest solution. It neatly scrolled through two tiers, and the individual panels displayed nicely on phones. I can’t really just repeat the trick — if nothing else, I’m sick of writing two-tier four-panel pages. By the time FREAKANGELS is done, I will have written 864 of them. So now I’m having to solve this all over again. Days like this are why I need filthy assistants. Or at least a nurse. And sedatives.

Your first interview is the #1 most popular on the site, to what do you attribute your popularity?

It’s more like to whom. Warren Ellis posted a link on his website. Warren is like the nexus of the internet. He’s introduced me to half the people I know, and if I didn’t meet them through him or through his personal site, then it was through his message board Whitechapel. He has a way of bringing creatives together. I can’t say enough good things about him.

Don’t believe a word she says. I am horrible and I hate everyone.

Oh, my god. Several artists are airing "teaser" crops of their TRANSMET charity book art, and here’s the amazing Annie Wu’s:

Seriously, someone give me all the money so I can write something for her one day.

Photo by Tom Taylor. A very Terence McKenna sentiment. Which reminds me: the Psychedelic Salon podcast continues to do a fine job in excavating and archiving old Terence McKenna talks, and they recently re-presented one of my favourites, "Psylocibin And The Sands Of Times." If you can get used to McKenna’s fairly arch and nasal delivery, you’ll find some fascinating stuff in his talks. I’ve been reading and listening to his work for, bloody hell, more than twenty years, and was even on his old mailing list before he died, and I still find new material in there. I liked that he wasn’t completely dogmatic, and was entirely happy to try on and discard new ideas as he roamed. There’s a connection there between McKenna’s intellectual life and the Exegesis of Philip K Dick, who generated and tossed several million words’ worth of ideas to try and explain (to him) the world he thought he was living in.